Third Sunday in Lent Video of Divine Service and Sermon Text
Video of Divine Service at St. Luke, Rensselaer
Third Sunday in Lent
Romans 5:1-8
John 4:5-26
O Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
We are now halfway through Lent. Palm Sunday is three Sundays away. As it is good to do in many situations, halfway through is a good time to look up, look around, look inside, and ask an evaluative question or two. Lent is often a time when the faithful will practice a spiritual discipline that they do not regularly do. Fasting from food, increased almsgiving, and donating additional time for service are three traditional disciplines.
So, how are you doing with your spiritual discipline? Are you keeping up with your commitment? Has it been a challenge to stay focused on your commitment? Have you discovered that you took on too much and need to scale back or explore another discipline? There are three more weeks of Lent proper and then Holy Week after that to make course corrections.
The point of engaging spiritual disciplines is that they strengthen our life of discipleship. A disciple is a student. The disciple follows the master and learns from the Master’s words and actions. Disciples often imitate their leader until the lessons they learn are integrated into their being.
When God called Israel out of slavery in Egypt, He called them into a life of discipleship. The primary building block of the master/disciple relationship is trust. The disciple must trust that the leader knows what he is doing. Lutheran Christians understand that trust is faith. When God sent Moses to Egypt, Moses called upon God’s chosen to place their faith in the LORD God and to trust him as God’s appointed leader.
I have no doubt that while the people were pleased to learn that God remembered them and heard their groans and prayers, it was not easy to trust the words of Moses. Faith grew as they witnessed the way that God administered the ten plagues. By the time of the tenth plague and the night of the Passover, the faith of the people was securely on the LORD as their redeemer and Moses as their earthly guide to the Promised Land.
In those early days, Israel witnessed incredible, miraculous events. Along with the Ten Plagues, the tenth being the death of every first-born son, they also walked through the Red Sea on dry land, then watched as Pharoah and his army drowned when the water returned.
Amid the excitement of escape, it was easy to trust God and Moses. The miracles are invigorating to behold. They make it easy to have faith. They see God acting dramatically in real time. That was then. This is now. Our reading in Exodus 17 finds them entering their long-term spiritual discipleship. Into the wilderness they go. They went from an enslaved people fixed in a particular place. It was brutal, but they knew where the food and the water was. Out there in the open expanse, water is hidden, food is not abundant. So, their discipleship enters a difficult patch. They must trust God and Moses for the most basic of material needs: water and foods. Israel is learning new habits. Their faith is deepening. They are learning day by day, hour by hour, to mind their words, and place their complete faith in God. As the reading illustrates, Israel is failing with spectacular success.
In the Gospel reading, the woman at the well is failing spiritually too, but in a different way. Jesus brings Law and Gospel to the Samaritan woman. Using the law, Jesus tells her what he knows. She has had five husbands and the man she is with now, is not a husband. There is no marriage, no formal expression of vows witnessed by or attested by the community in Sychar. By simply stating the facts, the woman feels the accusation that God’s law brings. She is in an improper relationship. She is sinning. Not only that, she is even failing in the most basic spiritual practice of hospitality. She offers no water to Jesus, even though she has the means. In fact, as John tells the story of that encounter, I don’t think Jesus ever got his cup of water before she ran off to tell everyone about Jesus.
Despite our spiritual failures, God chooses to have mercy upon us anyway. Discipleship is about learning. A wise master encourages and gives additional opportunities to learn. God mercifully provided Israel with water. He forgives Israel for their many, many complaints and failures. Even after Jesus stated the Samaritan woman’s sins, he went on to tell her Good News. He is the living water that satisfies spiritual longings. He is the truth. After his resurrection, worship of God will not be confined to Jerusalem. Jesus is the final, great, sacrificial lamb offered upon the cross. He takes up the cross for all sinners, so that you may place your faith in Him, and receive the grace of His forgiveness and salvation.
The rest of the woman’s story is that she left her water jar at the well in her excitement to tell everyone she could that Jesus is the Christ. She placed her faith in Jesus. People that encounter God and place their faith in Him are affected. The Bible does not tell us this, but I like to think that when she was all done telling everyone about Jesus and retrieved her water jar, that when she saw her male companion that evening, she laid down a law of her own. “You need to ask me to marry you, right now, or we are through. I met the Lord and I cannot continue this way.” But, like I say, we don’t know for sure. The Bible does not tell us.
But we do know about Israel. The Bible documents how they learned faith the hard way. They did eventually become a spiritually disciplined and obedient people that knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Lord is with them and that He provides. The temptation to complain and take more manna and birds than was necessary for the day eventually vanished. By the time their forty years of wilderness wandering concluded, they were ready to enter the Promised Land. Their faith lay securely in the Lord God and the leaders that He appoints.
So, how are you doing with the spiritual disciplines? How is your daily faith walk going? Regardless of your answer, the Lord’s mercy is for you too.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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